Petaling Street Box Hill re-opened its doors last year after what seemed like years when it unexpectedly shut down. Today, the venue seats quite a large number of customers and marks a return of the Malaysian cuisine to the Box Hill food scene. Box Hill now offers a range of choices from what seemed like years of only Madam Kwong’s, with Straits of Malacca also having opened its doors last year.

The Box Hill outlet serves the same menu options as its other Melbourne counterparts, but where it differs as you’d find with most outlets of the same name that the standard of the food varies.

Their Ipoh Hor Fun is one of those differences unfortunately. The soup base lacks depth in flavour but general blandness in taste. I found myself in the situation where I needed to add soy sauce to the soup for taste. The chicken served also lacks flavour but at least it has a marinate. In most restaurants, the cut of chicken served would be a selection of cuts but mostly the tender and moist parts of the chicken with bones being mostly a small inconvenience. Maybe I’m just a bit lazy, but it’s something I often never seem to come across when I order a Ipoh Hor Fun.

The Dry Curry Noodles (Chicken), at least has great curry flavour and sauce. It’s rich, slightly creamy but still a tad spicy and goes well with the noodles. My only con is for a tiny bit more curry sauce to flavour the noodles as well.

As with the other Petaling Street restaurants, they also offer fish as a menu item. Steamed and Fried varieties. Their Steamed Fish was surprisingly decent, the sauce was flavourful, but the balance wasn’t quite perfect. The garnish of these fried pieces adds a bit of crunch and is most welcome.

Impressions
Overall, I found Petaling Street to be slightly underwhelming. The food standard here isn’t as high or as tasty as you may find in Glen Waverley but I only hope as time passes, it gets better with age.

The Knox venue is the latest PappaRich outlet to open in recent years. PappaRich remains one of the most popular Malaysian restaurants in Melbourne and you can see by the queues even after the stores have been opened for months or even years! PappaRich has opened in the foodies part of Knox, in the Westfield Knox O-Zone. Recently, I was graciously invited to dine there for the Knox launch with a few other local food bloggers.

The menu remains the same for all PappaRich establishments, but if unfamiliar the menu is extensive. Roti, Fried Noodles, Noodle soups, Rice dishes and a variety of desserts, drinks and small eats as well.

Most often I gravitate towards their Ipoh Koay Teow Soup with Steamed Chicken or with Prawn and Chicken slices, funnily enough my friend frequently orders the same dish too. One of the things I love about this noodle soup dish is it’s very fresh with its ingredients of the light (yet flavourful) soup, bean sprouts and the noodles. Complemented with the steamed chicken, it isn’t as rich or heavy as some other dishes because other than the fried shallots, nothing has been deep fried. According to my friend, it was a tad salty but given it’s only just recently opened it just needs a bit of refinement.

The Crispy Egg Noodles was something I haven’t actually ordered before from PappaRich. It’s interesting as it uses a different type of noodles that I’d normally associate with a Crispy Noodles Seafood Combination but of course these are slightly different dishes (as the Seafood combination tends to use an egg gravy which is more white in colour). The noodles aren’t as crispy but still retain a bit of bite to them. Other than the crispy noodles itself, the flavouring of the sauce is crucial to combine all the ingredients together. The gravy here is more subtle in taste than I’m used to but goes well with the tender chicken and prawns. It’s a substantial dish I must say, like most of the PappaRich dishes.

The Deep Fried Chicken Skins seems to be a popular choice among my friends, the pieces were quite large to just pop one piece in your mouth and crunch but it can be addictive!

Pictured above is their Soya Milk with Jelly and the Teh C special. Teh C is one of the more interesting Malaysian drinks, with its distinct layers of tea, evaporated milk and gula melaka syrup (sugar syrup). It’s similar in some sense to a Teh Tarik but the gula melaka does add a unique flavour to it that I quite enjoy.

Of course we had to try their desserts too! The Sago Pudding and Egg Sago Pudding pictured above is served with coconut milk. The Sago Pudding is topped with Red Beans, it’s a tasty dessert but I love sago (In cold desserts, hot or even as Kueh). The Egg Sago Pudding, however, was probably my favourite dish of the day. The Egg Pudding was silky smooth and just enough sweetness. Combined with the creamy coconut milk and sago it just makes for a delicious treat.

Impressions

While PappaRich Knox hasn’t reached the highs of their Chadstone store for me, yet, in terms of their noodle dishes. It certainly is early days yet, however what you can’t go wrong with is their desserts and drinks. So for the upcoming summer, it’s great to just sit out with a cooling drink after watching a movie or after a hard days work shopping and just relax.

PappaRich QV was the first franchise to open in Victoria before the Chadstone and Doncaster stores and since its opening earlier this year. I avoided the restaurant for months because usually the curiosity factor is high and the management work out the kinks of the service and etc. Even after many months, the QV store is extremely popular.

We ordered the Ipoh Hor Fun with Prawns & Chicken Strips, and it was quite pleasant tasting. The soup was seasoned well, and with the large chillies and chicken pieces, it all came together nicely.

Their Roti Canai with Curry Chicken is a departure from the usual Roti Canai’s you would find elsewhere or from those frozen packets in Asian Groceries. What makes it so different is that the Roti here is extremely dry, but crisp and crunchy nonetheless. The ones you would find in most other Malaysian restaurants are layered, oiled and although crisp on the outside, it would be soft and pull-apart inside.

The Curry Chicken accompaniment was reasonably tasty, but with the chicken being all bones and skin it was a tad disappointing. The Dahl is surprisingly good, but nothing really out of the ordinary from what you may find in ChilliPadi Mamak in Flemington.

The real highlight of this dish is the sambal, as I mentioned in the Chadstone review, it has all the right things. A bit sweet and a huge kick of heat. Probably could eat that all day.

Their drinks menu is extensive with a lot of variety, we ordered the Soya Bean with Grass Jelly and it was extremely delicious. Not too sweet, and just the right amount of creaminess. Would order again!

Their Iced Red Bean drink was also quite nice, with their sugared Red Beans at the bottom with shaved ice. Not overly sweet but still sweet enough for those sweet tooths.

Impressions

Service here was decent, food came quick enough. My main issue here is that when we requested for some extra sambal, they wanted $3 for basically one spoonful. I’m not sure if this is consistent with the Chadstone and Doncaster stores, but when we did ask fore more sambal in Chadstone, and we were not asked to pay for it. We did mention this to the staff at the counter when paying, and he said that this was something the management from the PappaRich franchisor have decided upon.

Can’t say I’m that impressed with this decision to be honest. Not the best way to treat your customers when you start micro-charging them. Alas, can’t do anything about it though. Will see if Chadstone have started charging next time we visit. Would I go back to PappaRich QV? Maybe not. We didn’t have the best experience here, the food was a slight letdown, definitely less tasty compared with Chadstone. Plus there are plenty of Malaysian restaurants to choose from in the city.

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